Standard Chartered picks up stake in wind farm

Standard Chartered Bank, which is targeting improvements in energy and resource efficiency in its buildings, has taken a stake in a wind farm to source green energy for an office in Chennai.

It has taken a 26 per cent stake in Green Infra to source over 1.5 million units of electricity annually for its office building on Rajaji Salai in North Chennai. This will meet over 85 per cent of the building’s energy needs, according to Ravi Duvvuru, Regional Head-Regulatory Compliance, India and South Asia.

Energy efficiency initiatives are planned for its office in Pune.

The bank has more than 20 large buildings each more than 10,000 sq ft, where such plans to enhance energy efficiency, water use efficiency and reducing paper wastage are on, he said.

The tie up with the wind farm is an expansion of a similar initiative earlier where it tied up for supply of 12.5 million units of electricity annually for its office in Haddows Road. In addition, it entered into a build, own, operate, transfer arrangement with Sun Edison, a solar energy service equipment supplier, to set up a 100 KW solar power generation facility.

Standard Chartered recycles nearly 100 tonnes of paper annually through a waste paper recycler and simultaneously targets waste reduction. It has consciously cut down on installing printers – an office floor bigger than a football field size in Mumbai has only one printer and access to it is regulated, he said.

Water, energy conservation and saving on resources are targeted annually. Since 2010, when paper usage was about 27 kg for every full-time employee, the company has cut it down to about 20 kg this year, he said.

Electricity use has been cut to about 342 kWhr a metre square to 370 last year.

Lights in its ATMs are being converted to LED fixtures and soon 10 ATMs, two in each city, will be solar powered.

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